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How To Grow An Organic Following (RV Life Influencer)
I want to be very clear off the bat, I built my career off digital advertising and paid media, not social media marketing.
Advertising does not work for growing an authentic following on social media.
I work with a lot of big brands and we utilize paid ads to sell products and it works very well.
But this blog post is written more for the smaller influencers who want to grow their personal following and need help creating a social media strategy.
I also want to state that The Marketer’s social media marketing is not current because Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook were not bringing in the higher paying clients like LinkedIn or real life networking.
For this article I will reference one of my personal accounts for my “digital nomad” (I hate saying that) RV life brand: Bonnie & Brenden.
The tactics in this article will grow your following organically but you should set your expectations accordingly.
Exponential growth on social media means it is a slow climb to start seeing traction.
Then once you reach a certain amount of followers and engagement it is easier and easier to grow.
You can see this with bigger influencers.
It might take you 6 months to get 100 new followers, as some influencers get 100 followers per hour.
Implementing these tactics on a daily basis will help you grow your brand with real followers who are engaging with your content.
For the most part, these tactics transcend social media platforms.
Meaning, they can be used for all platforms.
Understanding Your Social Media Audiences
Now it is very important to understand there are 3 audiences you need to pay attention to.
- People who follow you
- People who don’t follow you but follow similar influencers
- Those similar influencers
When you get new followers you should understand that keeping them is harder than getting them initially.
It is important to focus on engaging with your current followers just as much as you focus on acquiring new ones.
Also networking with other content creators in your niche will be very important.
Especially, reaching out to other content creators with a similar amount of followers that you have.
Growing together is a great way to collaborate and share new followers.
Now how do you reach the people who don’t follow you but follow similar influencers?
The first part of growing any brand is to know your target audience.
On TikTok or Instagram, they make it easy to search Hashtags.
Find hashtags that are generally the same content you post or would like to post in the future.
Make note of which hashtags have the most posts.
This is where you will start.
For me, it would be #rvlife.
Next, I would go to the “recents” tab instead of the “top” tab.
For posts with a lot of likes or comments, sometimes it is hard to stand out amongst the noise.
The “recents” tab shows the newests posts for that hashtag.
Engaging With Posts
Every Night I go through this tab and engage with each new post.
It takes me maybe 10-20 minutes and I can typically count on 4-6 new followers each night.
When I engage with a post I am very authentic.
I look at the post, read the caption, and look at the user’s profile.
Then I leave a real comment, usually asking a question of sorts to show my interest.
It is important to always make the creator feel empowered and admired.
Keep that in mind when engaging.
What happens on the creator’s side is that they see someone interacting with their post.
This notification gives them a quick dopamine rush and they open their phone.
There is always a tense moment of “is this going to be a good comment or bad comment?”.
They will get more dopamine when they read that you have left a good comment and a like on their post.
I would say 50% of the time they will click on your profile to see who you are.
If you are posting content they relate to, it is more likely they will also follow you.
For example, if I leave a comment on a picture of someone’s RV and they click my profile and see all the RV life type posts, they may be more likely to follow me.
This may seem like a slow climb and a lot of work but it is good to remember that the best way to get someone to care about you is to show you truly care about them.
4-6 new followers per day is a decent amount for smaller influencers.
That is about 120 new followers per month.
Posting Content To Grow Your Following
Obviously people only follow influencers who post valuable content.
This could be funny or entertaining content, satisfying content, educational content, etc.
The consumer of this content has to get what they want from it.
It is important to post at the bare minimum of once per week.
Also each platform you post on should have content created specifically for that platform.
Do not reuse content across all your platforms, it is lazy and the algorithms don’t like it.
Before creating content, think about what your audience wants to see.
What were the “top” posts last week for your relevant hashtags?
For example in the RV life community, they like pretty landscape pictures of camp spots, funny RV Life tutorials, or cozy pictures inside their RV.
This type of content performs well and reaches new audiences which most likely will engage and follow.
There are a lot of articles on how to do hashtag research.
Yeah it’s helpful but it doesn’t have to be too complicated.
Find the big hashtag in your niche and use that, most likely you will get drowned out by all the other posts but it is good to include.
Then include smaller hashtags that are sub-worded variations of the main hashtag.
I call it the “Ladder Method”.
You are more likely to appear on smaller hashtags and get a small amount of engagement.
This little bit of engagement should, in theory, push you up the ladder to the next popular hashtag.
If the content is good enough, people will engage with it to where it climbs the full ladder and gets to the big hashtag.
This is not fool-proofed but it does work quite often.
If you made content for a specific audience and used the right hashtags to reach that audience it is more likely you will get new followers.
Even though you can include up to 30 hashtags, I would recommend never going above 10.
Just makes your post look cleaner and serves the same purpose.
The “Follow & UnFollow” Method
Please, for the love of God, don’t do this.
Never try to follow people, wait for them to follow back, then unfollow.
It is very slimy and the perfect way to build an audience of unengaged followers.
That is all.
Following The Right People
I see a lot of success with following new accounts in my niche.
6/10 will follow me back.
I have no intention of unfollowing them, in fact, I engage with all of their posts and stories when they come across my feed.
This is a good method to grow when you are under 1,000 followers.
After 1,000 followers you should rely more on engaging with other people’s posts and putting out quality content.
If you are under 1,000 followers it would be important to follow 1-15 new accounts each day.
Typically, I will go to a similar creator’s profile and under their latest post, I will click on the “like” button to see everyone who engaged with their post.
You don’t want followers who don’t engage with your post so you want to make sure you are targeting engaged social media users.
If your content is similar to the original post it is likely they will follow and engage with your content too.
When a new user follows my account, they usually check out my bio and click onto my YouTube channel.
This is the basic funnel I want them to go down.
I would say if I follow 10 new accounts, 6 will follow me back, and 3 will check out my YouTube channel.
If they like it they will subscribe and if they don’t that is okay too.
Overtime with following 10 new accounts per day and engaging with recent posts on your niche hashtags you can start to see about 10 new followers per day in return.
TL;DR
The essence of growing a following on social media comes from authenticity.
You don’t want to use any slimy two-faced tactics.
Just engage with your community and they will engage back.
Understand it is exponential growth, meaning at the beginning it will be a slow climb but eventually it will get easier and easier.
The tactics in this article take energy from you but are an almost sure-fire way of building your following with real followers who actually engage with your content.
- Like and comment on relevant hashtag posts under the “recent” tab for 10-20 minutes per day
- Post at least 1 piece of content per week specifically made for that platform and your audience
- Follow 10-15 new accounts that have engaged with your competitors per day (do not unfollow them).
These are 3 easy steps to gain momentum on your social media accounts.
If you have implemented these tactics and are still not growing, I think the bigger issue is with your content.
The main concept of this strategy is to get people to look at your profile.
If they like what they see, they will follow you.
But if they look at your profile and they do not like what they see, then it may be a wasted effort.
Just be authentic and show your community you genuinely care about them, most of them will return the favor.
Let me know if these tactics have helped you grow your social media following.
Feel free to watch the growth on my RV Life accounts through the implementation of these tactics:
At the time of writing my Instagram is at 304 followers, TikTok is at 38 followers, and my YouTube is at 389 subscribers.
